


garden

by tunnelOFdawn



Series: spring [3]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Youkai, Youkai Natsume Takashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23813728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunnelOFdawn/pseuds/tunnelOFdawn
Summary: An exploration of how Fujiwara Touko (and her husband) deals with the loss of her son and learns to recover.[Fujiwara Touko plants her love deep into the earth, where no man or animal can dig it up. From her hands, a dizzying array of seeds of all sizes and colors scatter. The earth greedily swallows all that which she offers. The earth knows greed but it, too, knows when to nourish and so these seeds crack open and sprout.She reveres the garden.]
Relationships: Fujiwara Shigeru/Fujiwara Touko, Fujiwara Touko & Natsume Takashi
Series: spring [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1194435
Comments: 14
Kudos: 164





	garden

**Author's Note:**

> you could read this without reading the preceding works but you'll lose understanding of a few details. the big points are that natsume is dead and has become a youkai who is a god of the springtime bloom.

Fujiwara Touko plants her love deep into the earth, where no man or animal can dig it up. From her hands, a dizzying array of seeds of all sizes and colors scatter. The earth greedily swallows all that which she offers. The earth knows greed but it, too, knows when to nourish and so these seeds crack open and sprout.

She reveres the garden.

Her achy knees dig into the dirt, as if in prayer. There are worms and they are squirming. She likes the persistence of worms and the way they accompany petrichor on rainy days. But today is not one of those rainy days where she curls up with Shigeru and hot cups of tea. Today, the sun shines bright and she is in the dirt.

Her hands worship the plants in her garden. She cuts a leaf, here and there, and frees plants from disease with careful application of certain sprays and natural remedies. Sometimes, she has to give up and uproot the sickly. When needed, she waters them with a watering can that her son had made. It is an ungainly thing with an ill-formed handle that digs at her palm but it is so very lovely. It is a verdant ceramic decorated with painted flowers that fade in the sunlight and in the vagaries of the weather.

Takashi had looked so tentative when presenting her with the watering can.

The sun on her bare neck warms her up and colors her red. Her tied-up hair resists the sway of the spring breeze. The scent of flowers wafts up and reminds her of all her hard toils coming to fruition. These are _her_ flowers. She smiles.

Wrinkles bracket the curve of her smile and crease the corners of her eyes. A face made for happiness, Shigeru would say in the time _before_. But now, her eyes betray her. A light has gone out.

When trees die, they hollow out with a picture-perfect facade. The heartwood dies and time moves on in an inexorable pace. This is Fujiwara Touko. She goes through the motions, listless and lost.

* * *

Touko witnesses grief diminish her husband to a paper cut-out. He is a dutiful man—he goes to work, he comes home, and he performs household chores. At night, he holds Touko close as if letting her go means he would lose her to the bedding and other worse possibilities. He does not let go all night.

There are nights when only the sound of their breathing fills the room. There are words to say but they never surface quite right. The only constant is the way Shigeru asks his nightly question. To whom, she has never ascertained. He asks, “Where is my son?”

And then Touko has to say, “Takashi is dead, Shigeru.” She strokes his hair as he collapses on her chest. Every night, the glide of her hand through his hair becomes harder as his grooming habits worsen. There are days when she has to brush shaving cream across his face and take up a razor. She used to find his stubble charming and compliment him until he was a stumbling, flushed mess. Now, she yearns for him clean-shaven and bright-eyed.

“My son,” Shigeru murmurs.

She makes soothing sounds but they cannot penetrate the fog of Shigeru’s grief.

She stares up at the ceiling and the head on her chest suffocates her.

But they fall asleep, as they always do. Sometimes, they sleep too much and dream too much. Touko dreams of the days _before_. He had been so very happy. He had just graduated high school and had begun to work on realizing his dream of being a social worker. “I want to help those who need it,” he had said and left unsaid, _in the way I had always needed it but had never gotten_.

On one night, she dreams of cherry blossoms—thousands of them blanketing her. “Touko-san,” a sweet voice calls out. A breeze lifts flower petals off of her supine body. She knows this is a dream but when she wakes up, the dream isn’t over.

“Oh, Takashi-kun,” Touko croons. Her hand gropes around in the dark. She pats Takashi’s indistinct cheek. “Let an old woman sleep,” she says. “You wake me up at night, so sweet and quiet in those dreams that I’ve had. I wake up tired.”

She falls back asleep.

Another night, another day for grief to wear her out.

* * *

When you pluck a flower from the earth under the sun, it has memories of the earth and the sun. It remembers life. For all that you accelerate its decay (because it is an acceleration—from the moment you live, you decay), it remembers all the vitality cultivated from careful hands, creatures in the dirt fixing nitrogen, sunshine warmth, cool rain, and nourishment residing in the earth.

Flowers are hungry, ravenous things. If you let them, they would suck the life out of you. It is in this nature that Natsume Takashi emulates and discovers power. In the spring when the flowers bloom, that is when he is at his most powerful.

He used to garden with Touko. They would weed the garden and Nyanko-sensei would make a nuisance of himself by wandering underfoot. Touko would giggle as Nyanko-sensei would plant himself firmly on the weeds Takashi was supposed to pull. When Takashi would get frustrated, Touko would gently lay her hands on his and say, “Nyankichi-kun just likes being around you.” Then she would pet Nyanko-sensei and he would have a smug look on his fat face, purring up a storm.

After weeding, they would examine the rest of the plants and Takashi would listen avidly to Touko’s direction. Touko was (well, still _is_ ) an experienced gardener with the callouses to prove it beneath her gloves. She would say to Takashi, “These flowers are alive. Treat them how you wish to be treated. Be kind, Takashi-kun.” And then she would snip rotten leaves eaten clean through by insects.

This is the kindness Takashi knows.

The god of the springtime bloom is not nice but he is kind.

* * *

Touko takes Shigeru by the hand into the garden. He does not resist and his hand is clammy and limp in hers. Sunlight illuminates the world so brightly that Shigeru looks like he wants to flinch. He is wan in the sun, features drawn tight with exhaustion and neglect. A light breeze plays his flower stalks and their bright heads sway in the air. There are plants in the garden, yes—but there are so many of them growing out of their rows. There is nothing neat (or natural) about this garden.

Shigeru stares blankly at the bright plants.

“Shigeru,” Touko says firmly.

Shigeru does not look at her.

Touko tightens her grip. “This is your son,” she says.

“My son?” he murmurs.

“He is the garden,” Touko says. She knows she is right; she cannot afford to not be.

Shigeru finally looks at Touko and there is something painfully pitying in the set of his mouth and eyes. “Touko,” he says, “Takashi is dead.”

If Touko had the face for scowling, she would. Now, of all times, Shigeru admits that Takashi is dead. Exasperated fondness wells up in her and it is a feeling she has missed. As it is, she lets out a sigh and says carefully, “Don’t you remember Natsume Reiko?”

And Shigeru’s face collapses as realization penetrates the fog of his grief. “He’s been leaving...flowers in his room,” he says. His voice cracks midway and his eyes desperately scan the garden. There are no cherry blossom trees, at least not one near enough to blow petals into Takashi’s room.

(Fujiwara Touko and Fujiwara Shigeru keep Natsume Takashi's room pristine. Not a thing out of place. An unmade futon still lingers. A drawer not fully pushed in juts out. Pictures embedded into a cork board. Paper and writing utensils organized neatly on a desk.

When they come in to dust off, they sweep away cherry blossom petals every month. They watch curtains flutter in a breeze from an unopened window. Touko and Shigeru are vaguely aware that there is more to life than they perceive. Touko remembers crows; Shigeru remembers Natsume Reiko. It is a cold comfort when they cannot hug Takashi nor speak to him. If it is him that lingers, it is a painful realization. Their boy, so close, yet so far. How terribly sad he must be. Their boy, with golden eyes.)

And Fujiwara Shigeru finally looks at the garden and at his son in the springtime bloom.

* * *

Fujiwara Touko and Fujiwara Shigeru garden together. The sun shining down on them leaves them alternately red and tanned. They kneel down on the earth as they pull out weeds. There are not many weeds to pull out these days. When it rains, there are always two sets of footprints, feline and human. A little message in a bottle, Touko fancies. Yōkai do not have footprints in the same way humans do.

The Fujiwara garden flourishes beneath hands that are not theirs, Touko knows for certain. These flowers are not her flows but she does not mind the change in ownership. She remembers how shyly he had smiled when she had told him that he had a green thumb. Takashi had always wanted to create.

Her little god of the springtime bloom. She visits his shrine and leaves offerings with short prayers. “Be well and be happy,” she prays. There are times when her visits are not solitary. That is when cherry blossoms twine up and around the shrine without any trees, just branches that are heavy with bloom rooted in the earth.

Those are the times when she wants to cry and those are the times she feels a warmth around her, an invisible hug. She whispers, “Takashi.” But there is no verbal answer to be heard, only to be sensed. On bad days, her sweet boy sets the grass to rise and twine around her calves, as if to say that she is not unmoored. Faintly, she will hear the sound of a familiar purr and a familiar body hit her ankles.

Eventually, she has to leave. Takashi would not want her bound to him, in whatever form he now inhabits. She cannot live at his shrine nor in her garden. Fujiwara Touko must live for herself.

She starts inhabiting her own life. There are days when she stays at home and there are days when she is out and about town. She will meet up with friends and participate in town events. Every weekend, she sets out for the market and sells flowers and vegetables from her garden.

People always come back to buy from her. They say that her flowers smell the best and last the longest; they say that her vegetables taste the best and last the longest. They ask her what fertilizers she uses and she has no answer to give them that they will accept. She will say “Love” and they will laugh at a joke that she isn’t telling.

And then one day, a friend comes to visit the Fujiwara household. She is from out of town and she has a worldly air to her that Touko had always yearned to replicate when they were schoolgirls. They used to dream of Tokyo as girls. Now, Touko does not care to match that worldliness—she quite enjoys her small town life and her family.

After they have tea inside, they move outside and back into the garden where they sit on aged wooden chairs. The weather is too nice to stay inside, they had decided. They have the usual conversations about work, home life, and hobbies. They even reminisce over their schoolgirl times and set up a date to visit their hometown as a nostalgic jaunt.

Then her friend says, “Your garden is blooming very well this year, Touko.”

“Yes…yes, it is,” Touko says. She cannot tell if it truly is pride that she feels but it makes her warm and makes her chest tight. Will the pain, she wonders, ever go away? It isn’t as sharp and cutting as it used to be. It is a familiar hurt, like healed bones and achy joints on rainy days. She is growing into this pain and she wears it proudly. She does not regret loving.

And her friend looks at her sympathetically. “You used to garden with him, didn’t you? I’m glad you’ve found your peace in this,” she says gently.

Touko smiles. “I did find something,” she says. “And so did Shigeru.”

“Oh, you two garden together now?”

“Yes.” _The three of us do._

* * *

Shigeru dies first. It isn’t a tragedy. He is 80 years old when he breathes out his last breath. There is a smile on his face and Touko does not let go of his hand as she stares. She is an old woman now but she has never learned to let go.

It is always spring in this town. Sun, high and bright in the air, shines down. Birds chirp and skitter across the earth. They flap their wings in a flurry of feathers as human footsteps fill their ears.

Sweet Tanuma pries her hand off of her husband’s limp hand. “Touko-san,” he says gently, “you can let go now.”

Touko lets him guide her but she says, “Sweet boy. I have never learned to let go and you know this too.”

He smiles tentatively at her, cradling her hand in his. He has big hands; he has grown up. He has grown up in a way her son was never afforded but she does not begrudge him his life. She pats his hand. “Take care of Takashi-kun—you and Taki,” she says.

“We will,” Tanuma promises.

And Touko lets go.

A few days later, Tanuma Kaname and Taki Tooru find Fujiwara Touko in her bedroom. There is a smile on her face and cherry blossoms in her bed. A floral scent dominates the room and renders decay invisible.

At the end of all things, Natsume Takashi says, “Mother. Father.” But there is no one left to answer. In the silence, tree roots climb up his legs. Flowers sneak across his form. Vines tie him down.

There is only Madara, who, despite the breadth and size of his greater form, cannot fill the void in Takashi’s heart.

Takashi outlives humans and yōkai.

But he takes courage in that he is not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!!!  
> been so long since i updated this series but considering current circumstances, i have enough emotion to imbue into fics like these, lmao.
> 
> [my writing twitter](https://twitter.com/yunmengdilf)


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